There was a time in Tami Smith's life when she didn't invite people
over to sting her and her husband with honeybees.

But that was before the Naples resident and her spouse Jack were diagnosed
with Lyme disease, before the days when the accompanying fatigue and joint
pain became so severe she had trouble getting out of the bathtub.

"You feel like you're 70 years old," said Smith, who worked as a nurse
before contracting the disease. "You feel like you have a hangover every
day."

The couple recently joined the thousands of people across the country
who view bee venom as an effective treatment for ailments ranging from
tennis elbow to arthritis to multiple sclerosis. Patients are stung with
as many as 30 bees a session.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Jack Smith straddles a piano bench and
removes his shirt as apitherapist Amber Rose lays out the tools of her
trade. A half dozen pairs of tweezers, an epinephrine injector (used in
case patients go into anaphylactic shock), two spray bottles containing
water and an empty plastic bath salts container buzzing with honeybees.

"Well, my gut tells me we should do an adrenal splurge," Rose says,
picking up some acupuncture needles that she will insert before stinging
Smith.

Since she started practicing what she calls bee acupuncture therapy
a decade ago, Rose estimates that she has done more than 40,000 treatments.
A short 56-year-old who favors silk robes and shiny gold slippers, Rose
is the ultimate proselytizer for bee venom.

"It's really a mission for me," she says. "But it's not about me, it's
about the honeybees. What the bee stings do is wake up the body's inner
physician."

"It may not be approved by the F-D-A," she continues, adapting the cadence
of a preacher, "but it is approved by the G-O-D and that's good enough
for me. We're all Dorothys and Totos, just trying to find our way home
again. Our ruby red slippers are the bees; they help us to find our way
home."

The medical profession in general and national groups like The National
Multiple Sclerosis Society in particular take a dim view of bee venom therapy.
The National MS Society has gone so far as to issue a white paper that
says "there are no well-documented benefits" of using it.

However, University of Florida pharmacy professor Dr. Paul Doering says
components of bee venom do have analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties.
It contains melittin, which has 100 times the potency of hydrocortisone,
he said.

"I think you would agree that this a strange way to deliver medicine,"
he said. "But we (the medical profession) are the ultimate snobs when it
comes to that type of thing."

Dr. Doering agrees that research is lacking on the effectiveness of
bee sting treatments and whether any benefits might be due to the bee venom
itself or the acupuncture effect of the sting.

But he also has concerns about whether long-term bee venom therapy would
diminish the body's immune system enough to make it more vulnerable to
other sicknesses. And he said that using bee venom for maladies such as
Lyme disease is pushing the treatment outside the range of medical possibility.

"I'm open-minded, but not open so much that my brain is going to fall
out," he said.

Those who practice apitherapy —- a type of alternative medicine that
uses a variety of bee products for health reasons —- come to it in different
ways.

Unlike Rose, who read about it in a newspaper article, Cindy Florit,
a Punta Gorda apitherapist, discovered it on her own.

"I was stung accidentally one day and I noticed that I wasn't feeling
pain anymore," she said. "Then I came across a book in the library called
'Bees Don't Get Arthritis' and it just clicked."

Like Rose, Florit does not charge patients for bee venom therapy itself
but for health counseling and advice. Rose teaches people how to administer
the bee stings themselves.

"Everything in the bee hive has a medicinal property to it," Florit
says. "Unfortunately, it hasn't really caught on in this country."

Florit gets her bees from Earl Russell, past president of the state
beekeeper's association, who runs a honey and pollination business.

"I don't think a hell of a lot of beekeepers know about it," he says
of bee venom therapy. "But there's a high percentage of people who say
these treatments work."

Bee sting therapy is fatal to the honeybees. The stinger is attached
to the female bees' intestines and the bee dies within a half an hour or
so after they have stung a patient.

"I don't feel happy about the fact that bees die," says Rose, who places
the spent bees in an empty cream cheese container after they sting patients.
"I always thank the bee. It's a very sacred act."

Of course the therapy is rather painful for patients, at least at first.
Tami Smith describes the feeling as an acid burn, similar to the pain of
a fire ant bite. Two days after getting bee stings on her lower back and
left knee, she has large red spots at the sting spots and her left ankle
is swollen.

Amber Rose collects the bees in empty plastic jars with a bit of honeycomb
inside, along with some water and part of the cardboard core of a bathroom
tissue roll. The bees normally become docile after sating themselves on
the honey. If not, Rose will spray them with a bit of water before lifting
them out with a pair of tweezers.

"You ready, Jack?" she asks, holding a bee an inch away from Smith's
back on a recent Tuesday afternoon.

"Yep," he replies.

"Hmmm, this one might be a dud," she says, while rubbing the end of
the bee against Smith's exposed back. "Oh, there we go."

Once the stinger, which looks like a small sliver, is embedded in Smith's
skin, a tiny sac at the top pulsates, injecting about 90 percent of its
venom within 20 seconds.

Rose stings people at acupuncture points with mystical names like "The
Gate of Life" and "The Mother That Never Dies."

For the Smiths, who have not found antibiotics to be as effective in
combating the symptoms of Lyme disease, bee sting therapy seems a godsend.

"When you finally have a good day, it feels like you're high on drugs,"
says Jack Smith, who runs his own window blind business. "You're high on
life."

"These types of treatments are really helpful for people like us," his
wife says. "You could go into a pain clinic and they'd probably give you
some Oxycontin, but if I do that I might as well quit."

Says Rose, "If I could wave a magic wand there'd be a beehive on every
block."